Terry Spear's Blog, page 387

50 Shades of Gray and A Howl for a Highlander!

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Final copy that is going out to printers. Yum. This is Duncan of the MacNeill gray wolf pack of Argent Castle, only he's getting into some trouble in paradise, Grand Cayman Island.

A Highlander is never out of his element. :)

50 Shades of Gray--that's what Mal calls her bathroom all done in gray. :)

This is Mishka, their lhasa apso. I didn't think I'd gotten a picture of her because she didn't like the clicking noise the camera made and ran away.

This is Beghera, and she was sitting at the bottom of the stairs looking up at me. I ran to get the camera and she was still sitting there staring up, waiting for me to return. Once I was done with the camera, she ran up the stairs to greet me. :)
My son held onto Mishka so I could get a picture. She's really adorable. He is too...


Off to do something important! Have a wonderfully wonderful Tuesday!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality."
www.terryspear.com[image error]

Gorillas in the Mist...or Just Hanging Around...

It's a much better idea to be way far away from the glass walls in the case of gorillas, let me tell you. Some will throw not nice stuff at you. and this one??? He charged the wall, slammed into it and one of the kids standing next to the glass fell on his back trying to escape it.

These gorillas reminded me of Planet of the Apes! Except the humans were in the cages...

 Several were sleeping sitting up. How could they do that without tilting right over and falling down?

 My son and Mal! She's a lot taller than me, so she could hitch a ride. I didn't realize how big they were until I stood next to the one. :) It was really cold and windy out so we were bundled up, but then the gorilla house and other indoor facilities were really warm so Blaine became the coat bearer while I took pictures. :)


 And for those of you who haven't heard of my Most Memorable Thanksgiving, I'm telling it again! Just in case you need a giggle!

My most memorable Thanksgiving!

Have a great Monday!!!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality."
www.terryspear.com[image error]

Escapism

Hawaii where my daughter and son-in-law went on their honeymoon.
Sometimes it's good to just escape from the world we live in. The usual routine. The same old thing. And fly away to a whole new different world.

Instead of looking outside and seeing your same old front yard, and your neighbor's, the plowed earth where corn stalks grew like a forest and the wind whipping through them made them sound like a pine tree forest, and the same old turkey vultures looking for their next dead meal in the churned up dirt, or the smell of skunks wafting on the night breeze...

Awaken to the sounds of the ocean crashing upon the beach or seagulls screeching high above. The sight of verdant green mountains and stormy gray clouds allowing a glimpse of bright blue above the even brighter blue sea.

Or a Cheesecake Factory and chocolate mousse cheesecake and a big screen TV with a blue-ray movie in very vivid color of  The Adventures, the Incredible Green Hulk, smashing everything in sight practically in your lap. And a black cat and a black puppy curling up in your lap when you don't have any pets at home.

Envision a couple of sexy jaguar shifters watching the movie with you, sharing the cheesecake and making plans for a trip to the jungle. Or wolves talking about the woodland run they're going to take you on.

Escapism either in the form of real getaways or imaginary are great ways to charge our batteries. Don't you think?

Have you escaped from your world recently? Or have plans to soon?

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality."
www.terryspear.com




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Time to Decorate for Christmas?

 My son and daughter-in-law's cat!

The problem with decorating for Christmas is that we just got over Halloween, says the black cat!!!

And now this? Humans are just plain crazy!

Shifters might tend to agree. Sometimes.

So the big question is--when do you decorate for Christmas if you celebrate the holiday?

One author was saying that she buys a real tree so Thanksgiving is early this year and it might be a little early for setting up a real tree. One year, my folks had a real tree when they were a newly married couple and the tree had termites.

My dad's German grandparents actually had the tradition of setting candles on the tree and lighting them. Fire hazard nightmare, methinks. But it must have been beautiful.

When we lived in Florida (after being from the West Coast, and fir trees were the norm) my parents bought a silver pom-pom tree and had the circular colored lights flashing off it. Think: bell bottoms, hippies, PEACE, yeah, it sort of fit in. It was in pretty sad shape by the time we got rid of it and moved to Oregon and were back to the standard evergreen trees.

Somehow silver trees just didn't look right, but then shopping in Orlando for Christmas in the heat didn't feel very Christmas like either!

Last year I decided to update a little since the tree I had, had a broken topknot since the day I had bought it on sale at Dilliards, and many of the branches had broken slots and so I had to wire them together to hold them up. But it was the most beautiful tree and even after all of that and decorating it, you'd never know it had any major malfunctions.

But my kids complained every year about the tree and how sad it was, and every year, I would say, next year I'd get a new one. So I finally got a  new one with the lights already strung on it. It only comes in 3 parts, which means it's awful unwieldy to lift, but somehow I manage. It's much skimpier than my other tree, not as tall, and though I love it for its ease in putting it together, I still miss my other.

We stood for hours in lines that extended down through a parking garage the day after Christmas to pick up a tree before the store even opened. And women were fighting over them.Viciously.  I'm very quiet, even in a panic situation like that when everyone was scrambling for the half-off decorations. But I really wanted a tree for the next year. Somehow I managed to snag a very harried clerk and he put my number on the first tree I could grab that hadn't already sold, and that was it! Somehow in the packaging of the tree, the top was broken, so the next year that I was able to put it up...I learned the packagers had broken it and had problems. And then for the next 17 years, I struggled to tape and clamp the treetop on top so it would stay on top~!


Isn't this one beautiful? No one could ever tell how wounded it really was. :)

This post is dedicated to the loving memory of a tree bought when the family was all together as one and well loved in another state where both my son and daughter were born and well loved in this one  and two more homes for many many years.

With all things, we must move onward and upward and this past year in front of the new tree, my son and daughter-in-law and daughter and son-in-law all  celebrated maybe the only time that we all will be together again.


Doesn't it look scrawny? But it's the family get togethers that matter the most, and I love my new tree too. :)

Have a super great Saturday!!!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

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Do You Take a Moment to Have FUN?

Here is my daughter hugging a tree. Literally. :)

I should post this for Arbor Day.

This was when they were in Hawaii.

What made me think of this was another author saying she and some ladies had some real fun. Just being goofy and enjoying themselves.

I'd thought of doing that if my son has snow in his neck of the woods--making snow angels, snowball fights--my DIL would have to be on my side against the rough and tough AF guy. :)

But it probably won't snow in time. So we'll have to have fun in some other way.

So when was the last time you had fun?


Sometimes we just have to play around! LOL :)

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com[image error]

Are You a HOARDER???? I'm addicted to...

Okay, some would like to call their addiction being a collector, and I agree that we should try to put a positive spin on things, so I'm a collector too, of several collections: Christmas Santas, snowmen, bears, and cover art.

Some of being a collector though is that others would gift me with the collectibles, which is why I have some of the collections--the Santas and the bears (not the ones I make). I have a very small collection of snowmen. Maybe 10. So that's not hoarding. Really.

I sometimes get that way with bear fur--see some new bear fur and have to have it. :) But I've been pretty good about using up the older fur and not getting a whole lot of new fur. Still, I do use it up eventually and the bears are off to join other households.

So what do I tend to hoard? Book covers.

I was reading a book about how the heroine was a hoarder. It was really dumb. And I was thinking, she really has issues. I'm glad I'm not like that.

Then I began to think of what I have that I've been collecting recently. Covers. Ohmigod, I need to be in a support group.

So here it is. My name is Terry Spear and I'm addicted to collecting covers.

There, I said it.

That's not just premade covers, but also pictures that I'm working on to make into covers.

How do you know if you have an addiction?

Well, truthfully, it's when your life is affected by it. You neglect work (hmm, writing is set aside to make another cover, and another....or rework the old ones), yep.

Neglect family. Nope.

Can't stop if you hear of a new place to collect. Or revisit the other places, spending hours (because I have a VERY slow internet and it takes forever to upload a page to look at pictures), and spy the perfect collectible whatever and have to have it, whether you need it or not. Yep.

Okay, so I have a semi-addiction. Because the real reason I get hooked on other covers is that I'm searching for the perfect cover for a current book I'm working on and see something else that will be perfect for another book I haven't written. Or, have written and need to revise. Or have started. Or haven't a clue what I will write for it but I love the cover (yes, that's perfect addiction material.)

When I talked about this on a writer's loop, I was sooo glad to learn I'm not the only one with this addiction. LOL

So while I was thinking about this addiction, I thought I needed to hold myself accountable. I went ahead and made a webpage that features covers for: stories in progress, finished stories that need a lot of revision, stories I haven't started but that are part of a series that I will write one of these days and I'll have to add a couple of more that I haven't added because I have no clue as to what I want to call them or write about.

That's where I know I'm totally addicted. I had no idea I had so many premade covers already made!!!

And guess what! It takes time to write books!

So the good news is, I've posted most of the covers on the website, and will look at them periodically to remind myself not to buy any new ones. Hopefully this will help with accountability. :)

Also, I'm hoping to curb my cover buying impulses and will tell myself that I can't have another cover up there until I take another down (as it the story is finished and I have removed the cover from WIP to available!

The problem with that is that I have some stories written that I don't have covers for, so when they're made available??? Oh, sure, it's easy for you to say work on the book that you have a cover for, but the writing brain doesn't always work that way. Believe me! (This has nothing to do with the collecting side of the brain.)....hmmm, I might have an addiction to collecting story ideas.

I can't deal with that now. :)

I'm concentrating on Silence of the Wolf! Had a breakthrough both on how to open the book yesterday and wrote 5,000 words, and did some research that also gave me a great idea for the story....so very happy there. :)

Here are the covers---and the stories to follow...one of these days!!!

Finished, needs revisions.





















Finished, needs revisions.

Vampire Redemption.

I'm still working on the sequel to Huntress for Hire, but I found this cover and had to have it. Adonis's younger sister is the one causing all the trouble now! Actually, she caused it in the first book too. So it's time for her to get her comeuppance. Eventually. :)

I actually was working on the sequel to Deadly Liaisons, Dangerous Liaisons, but still haven't found a cover. So I might have to finish this one first.

I have about 12,000 on this one. That seems to be my getting stuck point!



I've been playing around with The Vampire is Mine, Sequel to Kiss of the Vampire (YA Blood Moon Series.) :)

I have 12,000 words done on this story. It's the continuing story about the vampires Levka, Arman, Stasio and Ruric, and Elaine who they picked up in the first book. Arman is the one who's getting them into trouble this time over a girl named Fiona, thinking to protect her from a master vampire, only she's making a declaration of her own in The Vampire is Mine!
The Highlander, another book in The Highlanders Series, which is partly written--I think 20,000.

Hawk Fae is book 6 in The World of Fae series. :) I will definitely be working on this one soon.



Magic of Inherian, book 3, the Emerald Isle of Mists.

This is Lady Kersta's story. Started.



Work in progress.
Another book in the Shadow Elf series.


Two more covers I don't have the titles on yet, so not up. And many more pictures for cover art that I need to work on--maybe 30? Two of which I've begun work on and have started the story for one.

Not sure off hand.

I need more time to write! :)

But I am concentrating on writing for now--Silence of the Wolf.

So now that I've started this therapy session, what is it that you would like to share???

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Stinkiest Male Wins Out

I tended to come around the backside of all pens first, not knowing sometimes if I could get around to the "front side" of the exhibits. So got the backside of the animals (like the bear) first...this one was a meerkat. Actually I'd like to say that the the animals were just facing the wrong way when I came upon them as there wasn't a front and back to the exhibits. :)

So here she is looking at me. Cute little guy.


These are ring-tailed lemurs. Very curious. They kept looking at me while I was trying to get a good shot of them. They were so far away, it was hard to tell. The one in the back who was hidden, kept popping up to get a better view of me, but I couldn't catch it before it ducked again.

They're a kind of monkey and I thought it was interesting that they give off an odor (sounded like a skunk) to warn other animals away. But the funniest part is that the males try to "out-skunk" each other when trying to impress the female.

This most likely has to do with selection of the species, and the best stink provider would also be able to send other critters that might wish them harm, scampering off.

So, what about him for a shapeshifter hero?  


Okay, back to working on Tom's story. I might have to take him off the slopes and go for a different angle. *sigh* Actually, as cold as the house is despite turning the heat on and it saying it's 68, it feels more like 50...so perfect for writing about snow.

Have a super great hump day!!!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com

Cougar!

I loved getting a shot of him looking straight at me, but he was moving so fast constantly it was hard to get focused on him before he moved again.


He was way across the yard. The zoo keeper (might have been Zoo Man Thompson), was checking the fences up above to make sure they couldn't get out, then he released the two of them.



Here he sees something, and he was still for only a minute. You can tell by his ears and eyes and stance, he's ready to turn.

Then in the next second, I snapped another picture and the cat was already making a move for whatever caught its attention.


Really intense. But I definitely wouldn't want the fence to disappear, because this cat would be on you in an instant. :)

They are beautiful and it did make me think about what if this was a shifter. They're pretty elegant. :)

But then what if I wrote about a cougar, and everyone thought it was just some lady after a much younger man? Like some think when I'm talking about writing about SEALs, I'm talking about selkies....

Have a hump day eve!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

A Salute to Men and Women in Uniform! by Terry Spear

 Me and Mal, my daughter-in-law pretending we're in the AF! :)

They moved the recruiting station from here, but I loved how the services are listed right before: Just Teasing! 

 My son with a couple of AF buddies at his wedding!

How in the world did I ever end up with such a big kid??? Note: He has me standing below him on the wing, and I'm sure my tennis shoes weren't as thickly soled as his boots, and I probably could have stood up a little taller and....Okay, so he's just a LOT taller than me!

:)

I will be at Discover a New Love with a chat with other Sourcebooks authors who have written military-military related books, some of us who were also in the military. It's a chat at 8 PM EST, or 2000 hours. :)  I'll be giving away a copy of both A SEAL in Wolf's Clothing and Savage Hunger, since the first features men in the military, and the second has a woman in the military. :) 

I salute all our men and women who serve and have served in the military, which includes my father, mother, grandfather, and scores of others--including one of my kin who was in the Blackwatch! :)

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Hmm, Men in Kilts--Highland Rake!!!

There's just something about men in kilts! Even if you're not from a Scottish background, wouldn't you like to tangle with one of these?

Did you ever watch Star Trek? I loved Scottie! :)

So after two years, and now that I'm not working a full time job also, I hope to have another Highland story out much sooner! I have the cover and I have the story started! :)

But for now, here is the 3rd book in The Highlanders Series: Highland Rake.

In book 1, Winning the Highlander's Heart, we get the 2nd eldest brother's story, Malcolm and Lady Anice. Then in book 2, The Accidental Highland Hero, we have the eldest, James, and Lady Eilis.

And now book 3, Highland Rake! They are stand alone titles, so it's not essential that they are read in order, though a couple of instances are mentioned in Highland Rake about the trouble Dougald got into in The Accidental Highland Hero.

Dougald is staying with James, and he's the third eldest brother of the four. But if you've read The Accidental Highland Hero, Dougald is known to have his own difficulties, and so...that continues. And of course his good Norseman friend, Gunnolf, is along for the ride. Cousin Niall wants to join in the adventure, but doesn't really understand what that entails. And youngest brother, Angus, joins the party!

So here 'tis! Those loving Highlanders!


Dougald's story, 3rd book in the popular medieval Highland series.Dougald MacNeill is the next to youngest MacNeill brother and he's not about to settle down, until Lady Alana Cameron is placed squarely in his lap...and then, the trouble begins.
When Dougald finds Alana roaming the heather on the MacNeill lands, he takes her in hand to see his laird brother James at Craigly Castle to determine her fate. But who has sent her there and why? Her uncle, laird of the Cameron clan, that has warred with the MacNeills for years, has made a marriage arrangement with another clan and now that is even at stake.Having witnessed her father's death, and even believing he had returned her home when all along he had been dead, Alana discovers she has the gift, or curse, of seeing the newly departed and sometimes those who should have long ago passed over. Her own deceased brother continues to plague her, the rake, and now another, who is very much of the flesh, Dougald MacNeill, has her thinking marrying a rake might just have its benefits. Dougald's sister, who is one feisty ghost, has offered to help Alana keep Dougald in line if he thinks of even straying.But who sent Alana on a fool's errand in the first place to remove her from the Cameron's lands and set her squarely in Dougald's care, and who really killed her father and her brother, and what has it all to do with Alana? Will she and Dougald learn the truth before it is too late?
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Who wouldn't want a hunky Highlander??? :)



Terry, who was stung by a yellow jacket on Friday morning, and the redness and swelling are not going away! May have to see a doctor on Monday. *argh* Though not sure what they would do about it!
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality."
www.terryspear.com